


What happened to Tom Riddle?

by hauntedpoem



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Bullying, Gen, Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets, I have no idea what I am doing but it feels good to write this, James and Lily Potter Are Alive, Murder Mystery, Myrtle Warren is alive, Mystery, Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Severus Snape as DADA teacher, Sirius Black Lives, Slytherin bullies - Freeform, battling issues like blood purity, exposing the chamber of secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29842425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem
Summary: Tom Marvolo Riddle disappeared off the school's grounds in the summer of 1942.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley
Kudos: 6





	1. Hermione I

**Author's Note:**

> This might be a one-shot for all I know.  
> What you need to know is that Myrtle lives and she writes self-help books and Tom Riddle's probably dust and bones.  
> Not sure about Draco Malfoy, though.

“Look!” Hermione said in the same hushed, conspiratorial tone that tended to accompany most of their visits to the library.

“He went missing in June 1942.”

“That’s more than 50 years ago, Mione!”

“That’s what I’m saying, Ron. Strange things happen at Hogwarts every 50 years and this yearbook proves it.” She said, assertiveness clear in her voice. Trust Hermione to always double-check her sources.

“Tom Marvolo Riddle. Tom Marvolo Riddle…” Harry repeated the name as if there was something he tried to remember. “Why do I feel like I’ve read his name somewhere?”

“Mate, the only books that are not compulsory and you own are _Quidditch through the ages_ , _Broomstix Magazine_ ... but that's not really a book... and that tome Hermione gave you... what's it called now..." Ron seemed to be struggling to remember the paltry stack of issues that adorned harry's usually dusty nightstand.

 _"Bullies are Sad_ ?" Hermione added. “Of course! Myrtle Warren’s Muggleborn Memoirs! That's where Tom Marvolo Riddle was mentioned.” 

Her face lit up as if a bright lightbulb appeared in front of her. Ron still had a hard time arranging his facial expression into a neutral one. Every time Hermione was her brilliant, know-it-all self, he got this dreamy expression etched on his face. “Myrtle mentioned him in her third book, Bullies are Bad! When she was harassed by Olive Hornby and her gang there was a Slytherin Prefect that helped her when she struggled with her confidence.”

She’d given the same book to Harry because it made dealing with Draco Malfoy easier. Draco Malfoy was a bully through and through, and a Slytherin at that.

He’d always be surrounded by his bodyguards, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle and sometimes by a pack of pureblood Slytherins that thought themselves better than anyone else. That entitled little _cockroach_ really thought himself better than anyone. He thought he was better than Harry because his father bought the whole Slytherin Quidditch Team new broomsticks, he thought he was better than Ronald because he was rich and didn’t have six siblings and only one income, he thought he was better than her because his blood was not “mud”.

She used to hate him and his gang with a passion.

Pansy Parkinson mocked her behind her back or whispered slurs, Millicent Bulstrode liked to shove her if they happened to meet in the hallway – Hermione’s ribs used to be black and blue for weeks until she mastered the Bat Bogey Hex and sometimes Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass although not overtly bullying her, avoided her and pretended she was but a speck of dust.

All in all, they behaved like they were superior, just because they were happened not to be Muggleborn and placed by an ancient dusty hat in the House of Snakes.

It surely made her blood boil but Hermione Granger always found a solution. At least she had friends. Real friends. Not people who just talked to her because her daddy was rich or her mummy was a socialite. She honestly pitied Draco Malfoy. And she pitied him more, now that he seemed to simply have vanished without a trace.

In the words of Myrtle Warren, _“Bullies always put others down to raise themselves up.”_

That, and the amount of internalized abuse. She briefly wondered if all was well in Draco's home. She had a feeling that the Malfoy family was not all it seemed to be. 


	2. Ron I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok... I don't know where this is going.  
> ┬─┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)  
> Like... for realsies.  
> At this point, it's just a self-indulgent PG mystery and I like it that way.

It should have been all over the news, really.

Ron could picture it already on the front page of several wizarding mass publications… _“Hogwarts group of students uncovered the Chamber of Secrets!”_

However, Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster, decided it was best that the discovery be kept under wraps. Saving Draco Malfoy got each of them a Special Award for Services to the School. Even though Draco was a little entitled pureblood supremacist’s son, Ron didn’t bat an eyelid when he dragged Draco away from the coiled basilisk. Draco was half-dead when they found him lying on the stone-cold floor. Hermione was right. The monster used the pipes. It took them a month to figure out the entrance.

When Harry found what seemed to be Tom Riddle’s diary among Draco’s things down in the Slytherin dungeons, there was no going back. There was a note directing them to the girl’s bathroom on the second floor.

Hermione was the cerebral one. She devised a quick rescue plan of action but Harry, brave yet reckless, was the first to go down the slimy pipe. Ron wasn't surprised to see that Hermione’s runic sequence worked, mimicking the password in Parseltongue. Ron didn’t like it one bit. He should have known it was going to be a crazy year if Hermione already seemed to be mastering NEWT level magical theory.

All Ron could do was damage control. Keep his head down and drag the blond Slytherin git to safety and make sure the basilisk didn’t kill any of his friends. It wasn’t as if his wand would do any good, spellotaped as it was.

And now he was expected to keep his mouth shut and pretend there hadn’t been a massive snake lurking in the belly of Hogwarts… right. He didn’t like the whole cloak and dagger thing that Dumbledore insisted upon.

“We need to speak to her, Ron.”

“Wha’?” He forgot for a minute that they weren’t in the hospital wing and they should keep quiet. Harry had quite a scare when the basilisk decided it was a good time to wake up from its slumber and make a meal out of him.

“We need to find out what happened to Riddle…”

And it was Hermione, of all people, that didn’t want to let go.

“Mione, do you know what our school motto is?”

She gave him a withering look. Of course, she knew. _Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus._

“This _is_ important, Ronald Weasley.” She insisted, mind already made up.

Harry insisted he was feeling well enough to be allowed out of bed but the Matron was irreconcilable. Instead, he got a basket full of cauldron cakes and chocolate frogs from Hagrid. Hermione already stacked Myrtle Warren’s books on the small hospital nightstand and was checking what looked like a set of colourful diagrams.

“I don’t understand”, she whispered.

Ron scrunched his nose while leafing through the books Hermione asked him to read. _In case she missed something._ He knew that was a lie but did it anyway. They were filled with platitudes like _“be yourself, everybody else is already taken”_ and _“courage is being yourself every day”._ Ron wanted to snort but couldn’t help but feel a bit touched by her message.

“This empty notebook Harry found in the Slytherin dormitory just absorbs my ink.” She muttered.

“Where the hell am I?”

It was Draco Malfoy, finally waking up from the induced coma.

Ronald stuffed his mouth full of cauldron cake so he wouldn’t have to talk to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am partial to Myrtle being a villain in this fic.... but IDK yet.


	3. Harry I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have no plan for this one. here's a chapter from Harry's POV.

It had been a never-ending circus. Sure, Harry could have listened to his father’s advice and played a prank on Malfoy and his gorilla friends. He could have told his father the truth, for once, but that alone made him feel that the bullies would win.

Ever since his first-year admission into the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Malfoy had been pestering and cornering him with every occasion. 

It was no surprise when he got into his second year and Oliver Wood made the grim announcement that yes, Malfoy was added to the Slytherin team and everyone, including the replacements, got the fastest, newest and most expensive broom on the market, Nimbus 2001.

So, it was crucial that Gryffindor fought tooth and nail for that year’s Quidditch cup. To make things worse, Sirius, his godfather, sent him via owl from the Caribbean, a stash of premium quality dung bombs to use on his bullies. The label said that the smell could last up to a week on the people they were directed to hit. Hermione immediately confiscated the package.

She gave him a small, colorful, seemingly innocuous book written in faux cursive that made Harry’s eyes cross with strain when reading it. The inner sleeve depicted a petite, manic looking witch wearing glasses and a high bun – Harry supposed it was Myrtle. The blurb read: survived no less than 13 lawsuits for slanders from haters.

The information derived from reading it was half funny, half revelatory. She didn’t abstain to tell several stories where she was bullied by former Hogwarts students repeatedly until the end of her 3rd year when she befriended several other misfits and together they started standing up for themselves. Olive Hornby seemed like a crueler, yet less creative version of Draco. Compared to Hornby, Draco Malfoy was worse. At least that spiteful girl did not have the DADA professor, Severus Snape, on her side, because how did a 12-year-old deal with an adult bullying him day in day out just because his mother, Lily, rejected his advances when they were teenagers?

It wasn't enough that he was a blood traitor, had, in Malfoy's words, a good for nothing father and a mudblood whore mother. It wasn't enough that Neville has been beaten unconscious while trying to stand up for Harry, so bad that he had to be sent to Saint Mungo's. It wasn't enough that the Slytherin girls spelled Hermione's hair to howl or now began picking on Ron's younger sister, Ginny. So when he suddenly disappeared and Lucius Malfoy threatened to demolish the castle to find his heir, it was as if Harry, Hermione and Ron could breathe for the first time without the Slytherins bullies stalking their every step. It could have been peaceful, really, but Harry's heart bled even for bullies.

_“I am fine, really. Please, Mum and Dad, don’t worry about me. It’s just like Remus said – just a phase. By the way, do you remember that time when I told you that one of the Slytherins disappeared? We found Draco Malfoy, practically rescued him…”_

It all ended with _“I love you both. Your son, Harry.”_ But this didn’t stop Lily and James from visiting Hogwarts the next day asking Dumbledore for explanations on this mysterious rescue mission their son and his friends embarked on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
